


The Bravest Human

by supercatandfriends



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercatandfriends/pseuds/supercatandfriends
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since Kara became Supergirl, she's been in near-constant danger. Alex hates to admit it, but she isn't coping very well with her new responsibilities to keep her sister safe. Astra knows how that feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bravest Human

Alex stumbled out onto her apartment’s tiny balcony at three in the morning, a glass of whisky in her hand. Her entire body felt like lead. She should really have come home and immediately gone to bed, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Hadn’t slept in days. Probably wouldn’t sleep until they figured out what Maxwell Lord was planning and took him down. Kara’s safety hung in the balance and she’d be damned if she’d sleep when she could be doing something to help. But Hank had sent her home. Ordered her to get some sleep.

Tipping back the rest of her whisky, she briefly wished Kara were there. To reprimand her for being awake. To reprimand her for drinking too much. To reprimand her for the abysmal state of her apartment. Never mind. Kara didn’t need to know about any of this. She had too much to worry about without having to worry about Alex as well.

It was freezing outside. She couldn’t remember why she’d decided to come out here in the first place. Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned to go back inside and was immediately startled by a question asked from inside her apartment.

“Worried about something, Brave One?”

“Shit,” Alex cursed under her breath when she dropped her glass on the floor, watching it shatter, “What do you want, Astra?”

Astra was sitting in her living room, casually leaning back into her couch. But she leaned forward a little, a slightly concerned expression flashing across her face, when the glass hit the floor. She stood up, cautiously walking over to the other woman.

“I- Kara said something about you when we talked today. She was… concerned.” Astra and Kara were on speaking terms now. Alex and Astra were not. Alex had a difficult time forgiving the woman for putting her sister in danger.

“I don’t need you to feel ‘concerned’ for me,” Alex said, emphasizing her point with air quotes. She knelt down to pick up the shattered remains of her glass, but her hand was stopped before she could actually pick anything up. It took her a second to process that Astra’s hand was around her wrist and that she was speaking again.

“-going to slice your hand open.” Astra had already swept most of the glass into a small pile with her other hand, “While I’m fairly confident you can handle yourself, you do seem to be… rather drunk.”

Alex snatched her hand out of the other woman’s grip, surprised when she was actually allowed to do so. She stood up, a little unsteady on her feet and more than a little nauseous, deciding the best thing to do was ignore the woman who had broken into her apartment at three in the morning out of “concern”.

“You’re going to hurt yourself, you know.” Astra followed the stumbling woman into the kitchen, where she was already getting out another glass. Alex didn’t even seem phased by the words. “If you can’t think of yourself, at least think about Kara for a minute.”  
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare tell me to think about Kara,” Alex snapped, anger flashing in her eyes as she turned around to face the intruder. “I always think of Kara. I never stop thinking of Kara. Why the hell do you think I’m doing this? Do you think I _enjoy_ staying up every night until four in the morning, staring at my own ceiling? I can’t fucking sleep because I can’t stop thinking about how much danger she is constantly in.”  
Alex could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. How dare this woman accuse her of not thinking of Kara? Who the hell did she think she was?

“That isn’t what I meant,” Astra said gently, stepping a little closer to the woman breaking down in front of her. “She worries about you. And you’re sitting in your apartment drinking yourself to sleep. You can’t tell me that this is healthy.”

Alex visibly deflated, dropping her shoulders and reaching up to wipe at her eyes.

“I know. I just… don’t know what else to do.” Alex sat the empty glass on the counter, dejectedly deciding not to have anymore to drink that night. She sank to the floor, drawing her legs up into her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Astra could see the silent sobs racking her body. She didn’t look as intimidating as usual tonight, but it didn’t diminish Astra’s opinion of the woman.

Astra knelt down on the floor beside her, hesitantly reaching out to put a hand on her back. She felt rather than heard the hitch in Alex’s breathing, the sobs becoming audible now. Crossing her legs and settling in on the floor, Astra began rubbing soft circles on the other woman’s back.

“Sometimes you do all you can and it still doesn’t feel like enough,” Astra whispered, understanding the feeling more than she wanted to admit. But here was this woman, the bravest human she’d ever met, crying on her kitchen floor because she didn’t think she could protect her family. Astra was willing to admit to all her feelings of inadequacy if it made Alex feel any less alone.

 

 

 

Alex rolled over and nearly fell of the couch, throwing her arm out to stop herself from hitting the floor. She didn’t remember falling asleep. She did vaguely remember Astra being there, though, but she didn’t seem to be there now.

It was morning. Probably closer to mid-day based on the amount of sunlight streaming through her window and exacerbating her headache. She pulled at the blanket that was draped over her legs, trying to get it to cover both her face and her feet, but it was too small.

Rolling her legs off the couch and pulling herself into a sitting position, she looked around her apartment. Her clean apartment. Which she didn’t remember cleaning.

“Wow. Way to go, drunk me.” Alex ran her hands through her hair, trying to get some of the tangles out of it. The shrill ringing of her phone broke the silence of her apartment, causing her to grimace and slam her eyes closed. Blindly reaching out towards the sound, she snatched her phone off the end table and pressed the button to silence it before even looking to see who it was. Immediately regretting the decision, she squinted at the phone and tried to remember her passcode.

Kara. Twenty-three text messages and three missed calls with voicemails. Hank. One missed call, early this morning.

“Alex, this isn’t funny. Answer your phone or I’m coming over during my lunch break. Is everything okay? If you don’t call before noon I’m coming over. I’ve called like four times this-“ The message cut off, but the sentiment was clear. She’d worried Kara. The text messages were the same.

**-Alex are you asleep?**

**-Wake up, it’s nearly ten.**

**-ALEXXXXXXX DANVERSSSS WAKE UP**

**-For real, are you asleep? Is something wrong?**

The next dozen were frantic. Alex typed back a quick reply before her sister had an aneurism.

**-I’m fine. I just overslept, so I guess no work today. Don’t worry, you don’t have to come over.**

The last thing she needed this morning was Kara coming over and finding out she was hungover. She stood up, dizziness immediately hitting her, but she managed to get into the kitchen without smashing her head open on the floor. She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, a text message from Kara, no doubt. She pulled it out and glanced at it; her sister seemed abated for now and would not be coming over.

Looking up from her phone, she saw an empty glass on her counter. She picked it up; inspecting it to make sure it was clean. Turning towards the sink, it almost slipped out of her hand. She sighed, thinking about how she really didn’t need two broken glasses in twenty-four hours.

Two broken glasses? Right, she’d broken a glass the night before. And Astra had cleaned it up? Yes, that’s what had happened. There was broken glass in the trashcan, so someone had cleaned it up… Had Astra been in the kitchen?

Alex dropped her hands down to her sides, letting the empty glass graze against her pants leg. She remembered crying on the kitchen floor. Astra rubbing her back and telling her that she understood. Alex could feel the tears welling up in her eyes again. Humiliated, she slammed the empty glass back down on the counter.

She turned on the water and immediately stuck her hands under the cold stream. She brought her face down towards the sink, splashing freezing cold water onto herself, not particularly caring that her shirt was getting wet. Her hands were shaking, whether from the cold or the crying, she couldn’t be sure. But at least she couldn’t feel the tears on her face as they fell, blending in with the water that was dripping down her neck.

 

 

 

She didn’t find the note until later, sitting on her end table. It had presumably been tucked underneath her phone. It was written on a folded up take-out receipt and she almost threw it away.

 _You feel asleep on the kitchen floor. I hope you don’t mind, but I moved you to the couch. Your shoes are under the coffee table. If you want to talk about it, call me._

Astra had signed it with her phone number and a squiggle that Alex assumed was supposed to be her name. Alex didn’t even know she had a phone. But she supposed that the woman had lived on Earth for almost as long as Kara had. Hell, Astra could have an apartment and a pet cat for all she knew. She crumpled the note up in her hand and shoved it into a drawer on the end table. She didn’t need Astra’s pity or her phone number. In fact, she could easily go the rest of her life without having to face the other woman again and she would be absolutely okay with that.

But she also couldn’t stop wishing that she could remember what Astra’s hands felt like on her back. Or what she smelled like. Alex was fairly certain that Astra would never forget that she had reeked of whisky.

 

 

 

The next week, Lord fled National City. It was all over the papers. His company shut down, hundreds of people were out of work. And he went underground. The media had turned on him, no one wanted to support a man who couldn’t support Supergirl, especially after he called her a monster for saving a group of kindergarteners from a burning building.

Alex had hoped she would be able to sleep now that the man wasn’t actively threatening her sister. But forty-five minutes of fruitlessly trying to get comfortable enough to sleep in her own bed, she had to admit that sleep was still evading her. She got up and walked back into her living room, considering pouring herself a glass of wine. It was cold in her apartment. She was only wearing a t-shirt and her underwear. She pulled at the blanket on the couch as she went by, planning on wrapping it around her waist, but it got snagged in the end table’s closed drawer. When she tugged on it, the drawer was pulled out of its track, spilling its contents across the floor with a crash.

“Fuck me,” Alex muttered, dropping the blanket and resigning herself to clean up the mess before she forgot it existed. Dropping to her knees beside the couch, she realized that she’d cracked the drawer open and that she’d have to either fix it or buy a new end table.

Pushing the broken drawer across the floor and out of the way, she started gathering up the papers that were strewn across her living room. Unpaid bills, junk mail, take-out menus. Most of it could go in the trash. A crumpled up piece of receipt paper caught her eye. Leaning back against the edge of the couch, she tried to smooth it out on her thigh.

She knew what it was. Astra’s little note. She tried to tell herself that she was only trying to smooth it out so that she could save it for the phone number. In case something bad ever happened with Kara and she needed to get in touch with the other woman. But she could always just get the number out of Kara’s phone the next time she saw her; Kara was sure to have it.

Receipt paper isn’t known for its quality. The words, written in pencil, were smudged and almost unreadable in some places. Alex pulled it closer to her face, squinting a little to try to read it. The number had survived, as well as the squiggly signature. But most of the beginning was gone. She lightly traced her thumb over the first line and what was left of the pencil came off on her finger. Alex licked her thumb and wiped it off on her shirt.

She rushed back to her room to get her phone, suddenly needing to take a picture of the note before any more of it was lost. Sitting down on her bed, she turned on the lamp and tried one last time to flatten out the note. The camera on her phone seemed to take a lifetime to properly focus on the words. She took four pictures of it.

Picking it back up and holding it up under the light, she noticed that the “A” in Astra’s name was just a large lowercase “a”. She used to sign her name like that, back in high school. Her teachers had told her it looked unprofessional.

She walked over to her desk and dug through it for a stickpin. She searched the wall beside her bed for one of the dozen of tiny holes she’d made while living there; she hated making new ones when she hung things up. Settling on a spot directly above a photo of her and Kara, she stuck the note to the wall.

It seemed silly. What would she tell Kara if she saw it? There was really no explanation for either the content of the note or why she’d hung it up. She just didn’t want to lose it. Alex wanted to be constantly reminded that it existed, which she knew wouldn’t happen if she let it rot in one of the packed drawers in her apartment.

Almost as an afterthought, she saved the number in her phone, safely under the distancing name of “Kara’s Aunt”.

 

 

 

Falling off a second story balcony had hurt like a motherfucker, but she’d thankfully only sprained her right wrist and gotten some massive bruises. Kara was inconsolable; constantly blathering about how she should have caught Alex before she hit the ground as if Kara hadn’t been busy trying not to let Non slit her throat with that stupid Kryptonite knife.

Cursing her way through attempting to take off her jacket without taking off the brace, she accidentally slammed her uninjured elbow into the wall. She finally gave up and took of the brace, tossing it into the living room.

“I don’t have much experience with these things, but I’m fairly certain you’re supposed to wear them.” Astra sauntered out of Alex’s living room, holding the damn brace. Alex groaned as she quickly ripped her jacket over her injured wrist, figuring it was best to handle it like a band-aid.

“You know, for a supposedly _reformed_ Kryptonian, you sure do spend a lot of your time breaking and entering.” Alex snatched the brace out of Astra’s hand with her left hand. After watching Alex try to put it back on by herself, Astra grabbed Alex’s right elbow and quickly put the brace back on the other woman. As soon as she finished, Alex cradled her injured hand at her chest, stepping back from Astra. “I don’t need your help.”

“I never said you did,” Astra said reverently, backing up to allow the younger woman her space. “And I will leave if you want me to.”

“Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care,” Alex muttered, slipping around her into the kitchen. She needed something to drink. Except the pain meds she was on weren’t supposed to be mixed with alcohol. So tonight, “a drink” meant orange juice. She felt like a fucking kid, pouring orange juice directly into a cup and not mixing anything with it. Astra watched her from the doorway.

“Do you actually want something?” She felt a little regretful at being so harsh, but she was in pain and still fairly embarrassed over the last time Astra had been in her apartment.

“I heard what happened today.”

“Yeah? You heard that your dumbass husband tried to kill Kara and one of your stupid minions pushed me off a second story balcony?” Alex spat out, slamming her cup back down and watching the liquid splash out onto counter.

“If it matters, I don’t consider him my husband anymore. Nor do I particularly wish to be associated with his followers. But you do have a right to be angry with me. I’m sorry that happened and wish I could have stopped it.” Dammit. Why the hell did the woman have to be so… so damn rational? Alex wanted Astra to scream at her about how none of this was her fault anymore. She wanted a real fight, not some conciliatory word and an apology.

“Yeah-well. Cool. Whatever.” Alex tried to wipe up the spilled orange juice with her sleeve, planning to take the shirt off soon enough anyway. Astra looked like all she wanted to do was find a paper towel and stop this disaster, but she didn’t want to offend Alex by offering any more unwanted help. Sleeves do not make particularly good towels, but Alex wouldn’t admit defeat to a dumb orange juice spill. Biting her upper lip, she angrily slammed her fist onto the counter.

“I’ll just let myself out,” Astra said, sensing that Alex was embarrassed. Assuming she wouldn’t want Astra around for another break down.

“Don’t.” It was quiet. Almost choked out. Alex was staring at the floor, wrapping her arms around her chest. Trying to ignore that she was making a mess with the orange juice.

“Are you- I don’t know what you want me to do, Brave One,” Astra admitted, moving into the kitchen and helplessly holding up her arms in front of her.

“Don’t call me that, for starters,” Alex mumbled. “I’m not brave.”

“Of course you are.” Astra looked genuinely confused. Alex Danvers was the bravest human she’d ever met. These nights in her apartment had only confirmed that. “You wake up every day and fight to protect Kara. To protect your family and your people. Against forces much stronger than your own. Never thinking of the danger it presents to you. Modesty is not becoming, Alex Danvers.”

Alex snorted and lifted her head up to look at the woman in her kitchen. She wasn’t exactly a person that Alex ever expected to receive a pep talk from; it was funny in a weird sort of way. Astra sounded like Kara. The words were Kara’s but the tone was different. Kara would have been distraught over the thought of Alex never thinking of herself. Astra sounded proud.

Alex definitely looked a wreck. Orange juice on her shirt, bloodshot eyes, but a slight grin starting to show on her face. A chill came through the apartment and forced her to take notice of the soaked spot on the center of her chest from where she’d wrapped her wet arm across herself. Astra saw the shiver that Alex tried to hide.

“I’ll go find a dry shirt,” Astra said, already turning to go towards the other woman’s room.

Alex pulled at her wet sleeve, stretching it out of shape before tugging the shirt off entirely, careful of her wrist this time. She dropped it on the counter and mopped up the rest of the juice before going to her own room to throw it in the hamper. She was checking to make sure her bra wasn’t wet when she walked into her room, hardly noticing that Astra had stopped looking for a clean shirt.

“You got my note.” Alex snapped her head around and saw that the other woman was staring pensively at her wall. At the note that she’d written; the inconsequential note that Alex had hung on her wall. “I wasn’t sure if you ever found it. You never called.”

“I didn’t see the need,” Alex said, trying to sound confident while digging through her closet. She picked up a black t-shirt off the floor and threw it on.

“You’re in pain. Denying it won’t make it go away. Trust me,” Astra said, turning around, swiping her hand across the note as she did so. She slowly walked towards Alex; giving the other woman enough time to back away if she wanted to. But Alex held her ground, allowed Astra to stand in front of her, barely a foot away. Allowed Astra to reach up with one of her hands and sweep Alex’s hair behind her ear. Didn’t move when she brought the other hand up to cup her face. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” Alex asked, hating how breathy the words came out. Astra tilted her face up a bit in her hands.

“Trust me.” The words were whispered, meant to be seen on her lips more than they were meant to be heard. And Alex found that she did. Trust her. She wasn’t sure when it had happened. Somewhere along the way, her determination to never forgive had slipped away. Kara trusted her. And that was good enough for Alex.

Alex nodded, beginning to understand how Kara could love this woman. Astra dipped her head down a bit, brushing her lips across Alex’s cheek. She started to pull back, get out of Alex’s personal space, but Alex quickly slipped her arms around Astra’s neck, holding her in place inches away from her face.

“Don’t,” Alex whispered, letting her hands slip forward to mirror Astra’s hands on her own face. Astra was a little taller than she was; she’d never really noticed. Her face was soft, her skin and her expression. Both of which were strange to notice on the fierce Kryptonian.

Sliding forward onto her toes, Alex leaned her forehead against Astra’s. She knew the other woman could feel her heart beating intensely in her chest and wondered what she thought of that. Searching the other woman’s eyes did very little to answer the question; Astra seemed content to just let Alex do as she pleased. She trailed her hand down Astra’s neck, some of her hair catching in the brace that Alex still wore. Gently pulling her hand free, she separated out the silver stands of Astra’s hair from the rest, twirling it around her fingers.

“I trust you, okay?” Alex said before tilting her head and capturing Astra’s lips with her own. She felt Astra’s hands tighten on her cheeks; it wasn’t painful, just a bit more forceful. Astra didn’t seem to mind when Alex deepened the kiss, letting Alex’s tongue into her mouth when she traced it across her bottom lip. Humming a little, Astra moved both her hands up to run through Alex’s hair and pull her closer. Alex was the first to pull back, needing to catch her breath.

“Are you okay?” Astra asked, a bit concerned by Alex’s gasping breaths and racing heart.

“I’m fine- I might have… forgotten that I needed to breathe for a minute there,” Alex choked out between breaths, dropping a hand out of Astra’s hair to clutch at her own chest. Astra smiled, shaking her head and pulling Alex forward to rest her head on Astra’s shoulder. She was quite pleased with this new addition to her little family. Alex Danvers, the bravest human she’d ever met. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this junk. Comments are read with absolute delight. If you're interested, you should follow me on tumblr, where i post a lot of dumb supergirl stuff. supercatandfriends.tumblr.com


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